Political Crossfire Forums

in what world do sanctions NOT impact trading partners of a target country, europe? what do you want, no sanctions on a target country ever?

sometimes i wish we never got involved in nato

Rexit?

http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... ept-report

FOR GOD'S SAKE REX, WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST

international sanctions are levied on nations not individuals like magnitsky act. Although expanding the scope of who is impacted would piss Putin off, I don't see why Russia should be immune from sanctions because Germany wants cheap gas

Consider a couple things first:

- Merkel is in an election year - Trump is a focal point, her primary contender believes she's been too soft on Trump
- Trump's popularity in Europe is anything but (thus actually forcing politicians to appear or actually be hostile towards him to jockey for political support at home)
- These sanctions deprive EU members of choice, something of which you've alluded to in your posts on Poland and the judiciary, forcing them to depend on alternative sources which would likely be US

As much as we like Europe I'm fairly certain we wouldn't stand for Europe imposing sanctions on one of our largest trading partners forcing our dependence on something that only they can provide. Yes, it's Russia. Yes, it should probably happen. But not like this - the Executive is entirely unwilling leaving foreign policy up to Congress. It's an imperfect body and it wasn't really designed for this. Did these representative bodies reach out to their European peers to establish a certain level of cooperation on these sanctions? Probably not.